by Andrew Carey
LIMERICK flood victims who were asked to appear on RTE’s Prime Time programme to highlight the devastation in St Mary’s Park were told they wouldn’t be given expenses to cover the cost of travel to Dublin.
The national broadcaster has been strongly criticised for its refusal to pay travel expenses to the residents of Kings Island who lost their homes and personal belongings when the Shannon burst its banks.
Local area representative Cllr Maurice Quinlivan has said that when the residents learned they would have very little input to the programme, they felt they couldn’t go, as they had to fund the trip themselves.
“They now feel let down. They wanted to express their feeling and report their experiences of the devastating flood that destroyed their homes.
“Shortly after RTE gave the IONA institute almost €80,000, it is really scandalous that they can’t give any expenses to flood victims invited to Prime Time. This is really shameful.
“Obviously helping flood victims to travel and tell their story would be the decent thing to do. RTE rushed to give money to IONA, a payment that most people believe is misplaced”, he said.
The Northside Sinn Fein councillor asked if RTÉ was really aware of what happened if they expected people to pay to travel to Dublin a little over a week after their homes were destroyed and most of their processions lost in sewage contaminated water.
“It seems clear that the national broadcaster does not realise that most people affected by the flooding have lost everything”, he said.
The programme aired on RTE one this Tuesday night.
